[NU Sports] Where shall we bowl?

[Jonathan Michael Hawkins]

On Mon, 22 Nov 2004, Jim Leonard wrote:
> I really like the idea of the Cats coming to Nashville, but given that we beat
> both Purdue and Ohio State head-to-head AND have a better record in the Big
> Ten, could the Alamo Bowl really justify passing us over?

WARNING: rant!

<rant>

I see thoughts like this expressed every year at bowl selection time.
There's one thing we as Wildcats fans should understand by now: there is
no concept of "fairness" in the bowl selection process.  Every matchup is
made with the best business interests of the bowl as the foremost
criteria.

Here are some things going against us as far as "best business interests
of the bowl":

	-- small fanbase
	  -- examples: no NU themed sports bar in entire Chicago area
	  -- none of the major papers here think we're a local team
	  -- only 1 sports-radio outlet cares about us, and while
	     it's the best AM station in the country, it probably
	     only cares about us because their sports director is
	     himself an NU grad and apparently a huge fan of NU sports
	  -- smaller alumni base
	-- questionable sports marketing department
	  -- this, despite having a top-2 B-school.  I'm guessing
	     NU Athletics simply can't afford Kellogg grads.
	  -- did you see the posters from last year?  A current student
	     remarked: "I could've done better than that in an hour in
	     my room with Photoshop."
	  -- why weren't there more students there on senior day

All of these things add up to expectations of low ticket sales, low
viewership, and thus low returns on investment.

Hopefully winning a bowl game will turn some of that around, generating
interest during the offseason in seeing a "bowl winner" come next
September.  If marketing doesn't harp on the fact that of a six game home
schedule, fans were treated to five wins and one loss, a home sweep of the
Big Ten schedule, and more 4th-quarter excitement than should legally be
allowed, then there's a problem there that Mr. Murphy might want to
correct.

I would hope that someone could convince one of the newspapers in town (or
even the Sun-Times, which I won't dignify with the title "newspaper") to
start providing coverage of the Wildcats that was cognizant of the fact
that we are, in fact, Chicago's only Division I-A football team, instead
of their usual coverage that frequently is of less prominence than our
coverage in the other team's hometown paper.

</rant>

Oh well.  I am super-excited about this upcoming game, and hope that we
can get past it with a win and go on to play in the Poulon/Weedeater Bowl
and come out of that with a win as well.

Go Cats,

Jonathan

-- 
Jonathan Michael Hawkins       "The only thing necessary for the triumph
<http://www.jomiha.com>         of evil is for good men to do nothing."

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